Why be Anonymous?

    At the ending of the book, we finally learn the identity of the narrator. Dr. Rieux, the main character of this book, is also the narrator. Now, this isn’t really too much of a shocking revelation. We spend so much time with Rieux and so much detail is put into those scenes, it’s hard to imagine anyone else being the narrator. Possibly if Rieux had some sort of diary, but you would expect the narrator to mention referring to Rieux’s diary if he had one as he did with Tarrou. And I know early in the book, we had our suspicions already that the narrator might be Rieux. But why did we just now learn that he’s the narrator?

    For one, by keeping his identity a secret for most of the book, Rieux could provide a more unbiased narrative by distancing himself. Sure, he did rely a lot on his experiences during the plague, but he also made sure to look at those experiences in the bigger picture and look at the experiences of others in the town of Oran. Of course, he can’t remain fully unbiased (just take a look at his description of Oran at the beginning of the book) but this approach allows for him to lay out his own experiences as just one of the pieces of information in this broader narrative.

    Another possibility was that it would be easier for Rieux to narrate if he distanced himself from the events that he narrates. Because of his role in the plague as a doctor, he most likely has a lot of troubling memories from that time. If he remains an anonymous narrator, he can distance himself more from these past events.

    Also, if we knew that the narrator was a character in the book, that has the potential to be distracting. It would depend on how he would structure it, but considering Rieux is trying to present not just his own experience but others as well, the fact that the narrator is Rieux could become diverting from the actual content of the narration. Sure, over time the reader would become more used to the fact that the narrator is Rieux and Rieux is the narrator, but just remaining anonymous lessen those distractions. Of course, we wondered who the narrator was, but we also knew that the narrator would reveal themselves at some point.

    Or I suppose it could be a combination of these possibilities or none of them. What do you think of Rieux as the narrator? Why do you think he kept his identity a secret?

Delayed Action

    I think that we can all agree that The Plague features quite a few similarities to our present situation. Something that I found particularly interesting was how the authorities remained reluctant to admit that the illness was the plague (despite the evidence shown) and prolonged their actions to try to contain it. On page 50, Dr. Rieux told the group that “there’s a risk that half the population may be wiped out,” yet that does not elicit a true response from the authorities as they still hesitated whether or not what was happening could truly be a plague. At first, they only put up “small official notices…in places where they would not attract much attention” (51). So while they were taking some sort of action, the authorities were very clearly trying to limit the reach of these notices instead of trying to get the public to know what was going on. And these notices merely referred to the plague as a “malignant fever,” which feels like a simplification of the plague (51). I know that they were very hesitant to call it the plague as they did not want to sound the false alarm or even acknowledge that they could be facing a plague in their modern times, but they could have still maybe emphasized the severity of it a bit more. It takes until page 63 for the authorities to “Proclaim a state of plague,” which basically sounds like they’re going to go into some sort of lockdown.

    Now for me, this reminds me of how we later learned in the pandemic that the Trump administration learned of the potential dangers of the coronavirus and really did not implement any regulations in response or inform the public. I’m sure that many of you have seen some of the estimates of how many lives we could have saved if the government had gone into lockdown even just a week earlier. I’m not sure if this will come up later in the book as people look back and think how much different the effects of the plague would have been with a prompter response but it’s an interesting thought. Also, in class we discussed how Oran very much so had a constant routine and schedule to it, so I wonder how they will respond to these new regulations over time. Will they for the most part abide by them and get used to a new normal? Or will they start to rebel over time like some Americans? I definitely can see connections to the beginning of our pandemic and I think it will be interesting how the plague’s later development compares to our experiences.

Jake the Reporter (In Two Ways)

            As we well know at this point, the narrator of The Sun Also Rises is Jake, who I greatly hesitate to call a reliable narrator as shown by his many biases. The first aspect of Jake’s narration I want to look at is his “reporter” narration. At times, Jake seems to be a vessel for the story as he recounts scenes where he was there but not really participating with him saying only one or two words. It’s like he is there to report to us who is doing what and what was said instead of actually being a part of the scene it’s. However, this reporting that he does not remain an unbiased one, as he can’t resist including some snide comments or letting a little bitterness show through (especially on the topic of Cohn). And so while he is kind of acting like a reporter at times, Jake does not seem successful in presenting them transparently.

We also see a different kind of reporter mode when he is alone like on page 38, where he reports in great detail his bank statements. There was a sort of emotionless feel to it, just stating the facts. I mean just reading it sounds very abrupt with the short observations:

            “One was a bank statement. It showed a balance of $2432.60. I got out my check-book and deducted four checks drawn since the first of the month, and discovered I had a balance of $1832.60. I wrote this on the back of the statement.”

            It feels like he is trying to force himself to focus on plain basic facts, anything that wouldn’t cause some sort of an emotional response. We see that he ends up failing when his train of thought on that same page arrives on the topic of Brett (“To hell with you, Lady Ashley”). It seems like from scenes like this one that Jake may have trouble not thinking about Brett, whether positively or negatively. Either way, his emotions always seem to be very strong. Is this reporter way of thinking Jake’s way of trying to avoid thinking about Brett? As shown in this scene, it doesn’t exactly work since his thoughts still made its way to her but it was a way to try and to at least postpone it. And from what we can tell from their very complex relationship, it probably really pains Jake that they can’t be together and so he has to deal with the situation of not being in a relationship with Brett while still (at least that I can tell) loves her. Because of this, it makes sense that he would try to not focus on Brett because that would take a toll on him emotionally.

            So those are the two reporter modes that I saw, with one being much more biased (not the best for being a reporter) but actually is recounting events and the other stating much simpler, basic facts as a way for Jake to cope. It will be interesting to see how Jake’s reporting changes over the course of the story. I have a feeling he will become much more involved in the story than just a reporter.

Sethe and Septimus: Making the Only Choice Possible

    I don’t know how many of you guys were in African American Literature but I know that ever since Nabeel compared Sethe to Septimus in out breakout room, I could not stop thinking about their similarities. Specifically, I’m thinking about the Four Horsemen chapter in comparison to Septimus’s suicide. In both cases, Septimus and Sethe are not wondering what they should do. Instead, they do what they see as the only option in that case. For Sethe, this means killing Beloved and attempting to kill her other children so that they do not have to return to Sweet Home and for Septimus, this means committing suicide as the only way to escape doctors. But at the same time, there is something bigger than the four horsemen and bigger than Holmes that has arrived at their doorsteps. For Sethe, it is really the whole system of oppression that has been present really for her lifetime. Her children were either going to be free or they were going to die because death has more freedom than going back to that slave plantation. For Septimus, it is the societal expectations of masculinity and soldiers that have also been present for most of his life. After experiencing these expectations in his past and being called a coward by these doctors in the present, there is also a sense of oppression in Septimus’s case.

    Something I find interesting that both Morrison and Woolf do it that they allow plenty of time before having these scenes in the novel. In Beloved, we get the sense about something really strange happening in Sethe’s past that made people act weird around her, but I think I can easily say that none of us were expecting her to have killed her child. Instead, Morrison allows us time to appreciate Sethe as a person and see her traumatic past at Sweet Home and to really understand these key things about her before finally showing us this scene. If Morrison had started with the Four Horsemen scene, I think that, at least for me, it would be a lot harder to understand her actions and to connect with her. I know that in class we still struggled with what Sethe did, but at the same time, I feel like we were able to see how she saw that as the only option instead of just writing her off as insane or anything like that.

    Likewise, Woolf allows us to see Septimus for quite a lot during the novel even though he is more of a side character. While we do see that he is suffering from PTSD, we get the sense that in the day that Woolf shows Septimus he is a little bit jumpier and more disconnected than usual from the car backfiring. And even though it is one of his worse days, we do get to see some of his “true self” with the hat scene between him and Lucrezia. We also get insights into his past, narrated by Woolf, which she really didn’t do for any other character. Woolf knew how crucial it was to understand his past to understand his present. We get the sense of how in the past he was seen as not masculine enough and even though he went through the war (which is generally seen as a way to make a man) Holmes and Bradshaw still look at him in the same way, seeing him act in a sort of “hysterical” manner that only women are supposed to act. With his traumatic experiences in the war as well as the experiences as being viewed as a coward and not masculine enough as well as the terror of Holmes shoving his way after Septimus, we can much better understand why he sees suicide as his only choice (even as he sees that "life was good" (146)).

    I’m now realizing how long this is so I think I will stop my blog here. Do you guys see these connections? Do you see more connections between Sethe and Septimus and how Woolf and Morrison set these scenes up? These were just some of the first things that came to my mind and I think there is still plenty more parallels there.

Time Keeps Ticking

    One thing that I have noticed when reading Mrs. Dalloway is all of the smooth transitions. If I get distracted for one moment, I look at where I’m reading and wonder who this new character is and how we got there. I find this somewhat surprising considering that each person we go to in this narrative, we see inside their head, and I would think that going from one mind to another would be somewhat jarring. However, Woolf makes it so that the jump from person to person isn’t harsh or sudden. Instead, she always makes a connection between characters, whether it’s the motorcar, the airplane, or just some brief interaction or thought connecting characters together. I think for me, I found the motorcar and airplane scenes to be an interesting connection point. It kind of felt natural how Woolf transitioned through all those characters quickly as people do tend to voice their opinions to each other when something strange or interesting happens and the airplane makes it so that all of those expressions and thoughts could be linked together. Even when it comes back to Mrs. Dalloway after her walk home, it flows well due to her asking “What are they looking at?”, bridging the people, who looking at the plane that connected them to the others watching the plane, to Mrs. Dalloway.

    But something else that Woolf does that really allows the novel to flow is the passage of time. Instead of going back and recapping her walk home, which could have contained interesting thoughts and interactions from Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf keeps the novel moving with time. So, while Mrs. Dalloway is reflecting in her room, I’m sure the people who were watching the plane are still out there discussing it, but Woolf leaves them behind and doesn’t return later. It’s really interesting to think how carefully Woolf would have to plan these events, making certain things, like the plane and motorcar, are there to connect people for these transitions to occur, as well as choosing who she will follow at what time, and how she will eventually connect to them. I think part of this effect of weaving in and out of people’s minds is that it leaves you wondering what these people are doing after you have left them or have temporarily gone out of their thoughts. For example, I wonder what Mrs. Dalloway was doing that whole section where we were primarily following Peter, or even what Scrope Purvis is up to. And I feel like that’s a sense that we sort of get in life after we have seen somebody during the day and later kind of wonder what they are doing at this moment, but Woolf makes this effect even greater by giving us a glimpse into the minds of these people, which we don’t get in real life. As more and more characters get introduced and get more time in the novel, I wonder how Woolf will balance it all. With Mrs. Dalloway, Peter, Septimus, and Lucrezia, it will definitely be interesting how the narrative is balanced because, in this novel, time keeps ticking.

The Art Gallery of Trivial Items

     “Right when I suddenly had more blue sky in front of me than green truck, I remembered that when I was little I used to be very interested in the fact that anything, no matter how rough, rusted, dirty, or otherwise discredited it was, looked good if you set it down on a stretch of white cloth or any kind of clean background.” (38)

    In class, we have talked about “clean background” trick that Howie mentions in this scene. As we discussed before, this concept could be seen as the whole basis of the book because of how Howie looks at each item so closely, almost as if removing it from the world and putting it against a clean background. Having a clean background makes items look better, and in The Mezzanine, even makes it seem like a work of art. Howie is amazed by the items he investigates in his mind, almost like someone at an art gallery.

    Now, having thought about this, I can see all the more clearly as to why Howie would be triggered by Aurelius. I could already understand somewhat as I read the scene as to why Howie reacted the way he did because we already talked about his interest in these trivial, day-to-day items. However, now it is clear that he isn’t just intrigued by them, he sees them as works of art. He looks at a straw and can easily visualize all the work that went into creating an item that most people don’t even give a second glance at. Even with items he doesn’t like, such as the hot air dryer, Howie understands the process of its creation even if he doesn’t approve of it. He’s almost an art critic at times.

    But like art, the triviality of these objects is subjective. Howie tries to get us to appreciate the art he sees, but it doesn’t always work. After all, we are all different individuals and art always presents an array of responses. Some people love a certain piece while others absolutely despise it. However, I do find that some of his metaphors and descriptions do catch my attention and I begin to rethink how I looked at certain items before. But the same items do not attract the same people, which has been evident in class discussion, with some of us getting intrigued by a particular item while others not really getting into it. I don’t know, I thought that it was kind of interesting on how Howie viewed the world in this way. Is anyone else seeing this?

This blog is now for 20th Century Novel!

[Insert Title Here]

Here is the link to my semester project:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a-iK2Ea274q1sKSLe-OS14oN8LynMkU23j4eW1prie4/edit?usp=sharing

In case the link doesn't make you excited enough to read the story, I will also give you the preface: 

My story is taking place in 1920 at Homer Park, which was on the bank of the Salt Fork River. It offered a variety of activities such as motion pictures, visiting the small zoo, and swimming in the river. Homer Park acted as a small settlement over the summer with cabins and even a post office. Homer Park had its so-called “Golden Age” during the 1920s which is a big part of why I chose the year 1920, as well as the fact that it would be 100 years ago. This time period also had the Interurban Railroad, which connected Homer to Urbana and Danville. My goal while writing this was to have a character that wouldn’t be familiar with the area and not realize she has gone back in time. I also wanted her to narrate her story in a more unconventional way to try to make it a bit more metafictional and interesting.

Bound to be Bad

           When Dana and Kevin travel back in time together, Dana explains to Rufus that they are both from the future and are a married couple. I understand that Dana tells Rufus this to help explain her strange arrivals and to tell him who Kevin is, however, I think that what she told him might have later led to a misunderstanding. While back in time together, Dana and Kevin assume the roles of master and slave to blend in and protect themselves. This move, however uncomfortable it makes us feel, also makes sense. However, the combination of these two actions can be misleading from Rufus’s perspective. He was told that they were a married couple but then sees the master-slave dynamic between the two. Sure, he knew that Dana was educated and that mixed-race marriage was a thing in the future but he mainly just saw the act of master and slave. I know he got to see them sometimes not really acting, but there was still a lot he didn’t understand about their relationship.

           As we have discussed in class, the relationship between Rufus and Alice is a master and slave relationship, but it’s somewhat different. Rufus does seem to care about Alice and wants her to care about him. He doesn’t just want any slave, he wants Alice. However, he still treats her as a slave and as his property. He has her come sleep with him each night. This reminded me about how Dana went in Kevin’s room each night as well because Kevin didn’t want her to sleep in the attic but it looks different from an outside perspective. I feel like Rufus, even if he isn’t consciously trying to all the time, is trying to have a relationship like Dana and Kevin. However, with their acting and his limited knowledge, Rufus and Alice have a terrible relationship. 

           The thing is though, I don’t think that providing Rufus with more or less information about the future and who they are would change the outcome. With more information, he might just get even more confused and with less information, he would still reflect his time period in some way. I don’t see how Dana doing something different would change it for the better. I feel like there’s only so much she could do with her occasional influence on Rufus, who was already trapped in the system and influenced by his time period. I think that the relationship between Rufus and Alice was bound to be bad in some way and there was little that could be done by Dana to change it.

Wait, that was it?

From the start of the book, Vonnegut constantly reminded us that the killing of Edgar Derby was coming, that it was going to the climactic point of the book. However, the scene itself was pretty anti-climactic. It was one page before the book ended and the entire thing took one short paragraph to describe.

“Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot."

Campbell got to speak for much longer than the entire scene of the supposed climactic point. How does that make sense?

Something that seems much more like the climactic point is the bombing of Dresden. The book had been building up to the point where Vonnegut could finally tell us what happened in Dresden, but not in a way that told us exactly what was going to happen. It had an entire scene with some follow-up, leaving more than a page for the end of the novel. So what is the point of Vonnegut to be contradictory in this way? It’s not that Derby’s death was not important, it just wasn’t presented in a way that made it seem like the big climactic point. I guess if Vonnegut is going to announce the beginning, end, and climactic point of his book he might want to through the reader off guard a little bit, but I don’t know. We did have more details given about Derby's death throughout the book, but the overall way it was presented did not leave much drama as to what was going to happen. So why tell the reader these details ahead of time anyway? It does fit in with tralfamadorian ideas and the novel is supposed to be formatted like the tralfamadorian novels. So does that mean the climax in tralfamadorian novels are pretty anti-climatic? I mean, I would believe it with how their ideology is. What effect does this have on the novel? Do you have any ideas as to why Vonnegut would do this?

Does Reed = Emerson?

            In Richard Hardack’s “Swing to the White, Back to the Black: Writing and ‘Sourcery’ in Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo”, there are several intriguing ideas brought up. While we got to begin discussing some topics in Hardack’s essay, I want to think about it a little bit more. Particularly, I want to talk about Ralph Waldo Emerson.

            Already, we have talked about Reed being like a “white ‘transcendental’ writer”, specifically Emerson. Adding on to that, Hardack believes that Mumbo Jumbo is a “parody of and homage to Emerson’s works” (Hardack 132). Although there are some similarities that we discussed in class, in terms of the relation of god(s) and nature for Emerson and Reed, I really don’t see a big connection to Emerson in Mumbo Jumbo, much less it being a parody of Emerson. I certainly did not even remotely think of Emerson or that style of writing while reading Mumbo Jumbo. Reed says things throughout Mumbo Jumbo like Set “perhaps invented taxes” and Jesus “was a sorcerer…who went around the countryside performing tricks” (Reed 170). However, Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Self Reliance” (something that should be familiar from Freshman English) says things much more like “It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things.” Sure, there might be passages that relate the two writers better, but just looking at style and tone itself, even the content in general, they just don’t seem to relate. Even if there is this connection with Reed and Emerson, I don’t see Reed intentionally doing so. Just from looking at Mumbo Jumbo as a whole and getting a feel for Reed’s intentions and goals, it just doesn’t seem like something he would do.

However, even though I am pretty sure there is no connection between the two doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I would expect Hardack to know much more about Emerson than me, who hasn’t read Emerson since freshman year. And even though I think Reed wouldn’t intentionally parody Emerson, I could be wrong. It’s not like Mumbo Jumbo is a simple book to understand, and Reed is not a simple author. And so while I feel pretty sure that there is no Reed-Emerson connection, I want to hear what you think about the topic. What do you think about Reed and Emerson? Do you see the connection Hardack is making?

Formatting Confusion

            One of my favorite things to do is reading books. My main goal in doing that is just for enjoyment. However, once you read enough books, you get a very good sense of certain rules all books follow. These conventions become constant throughout different books, making it easier to focus on the storyline since the overall format is generally the same. However, Mumbo Jumbo disregards these conventions.

            It’s not that this book is really old so it has a somewhat different structure and style from that of modern books. It was published in 1972, which means that its format could easily be what we are used to. Reed’s use of numerals always gets me, saying things like “100s” instead of “hundreds” (Reed 20). Also, the pictures that are inserted took a while to get used to, since fictional books usually have illustrations at most, and I would say typically relate to the material in a clear way. I just don’t see that clear relationship in Mumbo Jumbo. These things plus the strange placement of Chapter 1, the strange use of punctuation, and footnotes that seem to not follow any pattern makes Mumbo Jumbo a little bit confusing without even considering the actual text. It’s not that I haven’t encountered books or authors that sometimes don’t follow a certain convention, it’s just that there is an overwhelming number of conventions not being followed here. For example, in Ragtime the dialogue wasn’t in quotation marks or anything, it was just part of the paragraph. I could accept that. Yet Mumbo Jumbo does that same exact thing and it bugs me for some reason.

But the one thing that nags at me the most is, why? Why does Reed format his novel this way? Sure, to a certain extent, I could just say the format was the author’s personal preference. But with this uniquely strange structuring, it’s hard to write it off like that. There’s has to be some underlying meaning to it all. It’s hard to exactly tell what since we have only just started the novel. In class, we compared some of the structure of Mumbo Jumbo to a movie. I think that I can see Reed definitely adding the front matter after Chapter 1 to really remind the reader that the book is fiction. Adding footnotes and pictures also accomplishes that same thing as well. The formatting of dialogue, chapters, pictures, and footnotes also modifies the flow of the novel, which Reed might be doing in terms of a bigger theme in the book or trying to get it to match some aspects of the story. It’s hard to draw definite conclusions at this point in the novel, but I think the structure is important and hopefully by the end we can see maybe why Reed formatted Mumbo Jumbo this way. But maybe I’m just overreacting. What do you think of the formatting?

What's Up With the Little Boy?

            In class we have talked about how Doctorow uses his powers as an author in some ways that are not quite subtle. For example, Doctorow makes Houdini all a sudden crash next to the little boy’s house right after the little boy thought about the magician. It’s a rather odd thing to happen, but perhaps Houdini happened to be driving down that street and crash. The chances of that actually happening is really unlikely, but it has some basis of realism. However, some of the other things Doctorow adds to the story seems to be like some sort of magic.

            The little boy started off seeming like a normal kid. Sure, it was odd that Houdini appeared right after the boy thought about him, but that was probably just Doctorow trying to get Houdini into the story. But then the little boy says something quite confusing. “Warn the Duke,” he told Houdini (Doctorow 10). Who’s this duke? Why did the little boy randomly tell Houdini this? It just overall is a puzzling end to the chapter. But the story goes on. Then as we follow Houdini in his story, he happens to meet Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It can be easy to forget the little boy’s prior warning like Houdini did (Not that Houdini would know what to warn the duke about). However, the little boy’s statement is somewhat prophetic. Could a warning have prevented Ferdinand’s assassination? What would that have meant for WWI? This is only the start of the supernatural powers of the little boy.

            In Chapter 15, Doctorow tells us that the little boy “could look at the hairbrush on the bureau and it would sometimes slide off the edge and fall to the floor. If he raised the window in his room it might shut itself at the moment he thought the room was getting cold” (Doctorow 117). Doctorow in this passage just basically told us that the little boy has telekinetic powers. Any doubt about the boy having strange powers is erased by Doctorow in this moment. It’s not just the reader connecting the boy’s strange statement and the later encounter with Ferdinand. Doctorow is showing us the unusual traits of the boy. For a book that can mix history and fiction so well, it is odd that he would decide to give the little boy these powers in a not so subtle way. What is Doctorow trying to do with the little boy? Why is he being so obvious with his powers as an author? There are a lot of strange things going on with the little boy. What do you think?

This blog is now for History As Fiction